I just thought it was interesting that only page 18A of the Dallas Morning News
Luckily this is offset by the article Robb in the new issue of Fast Company –
Which he describes as “[focusing]on how inexorable global trends will change our notions of what security means and who provides it.” Can’t wait to get my hands on it.
-Shlok
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Via Terrorism Unveiled – Apparently “only 10 of 34,000 [State Department] employees are rated fully fluent in Arabic.”
That is to say the lead agency in the GWOT, the one charged with reconstructing Iraq and Afghanistan only has 10 fully fluent Arabic speakers.
You can not make this stuff up.
-Shlok
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Larry Johnson discusses the prolonged innovation cycle/rule set shift lag time
Specifically his discusses the inability for a Beltway bound bureaucracy to instill a “field mentality” in its young case officers. Something the State department just got around to fixing with its foreign service officers in January when Rice announced a geopolitical shift of these officers from Cold War Europe to current “hot spots”.
Johnson cites the removal of Grenier (now former head of the CTC – Counter Terrorism Center) as evidence Goss may get around to reforming the CIA at some point; but makes sure to point out the future is bleak without a focused effort at dealing with this core problem.
The current turmoil at CIA will put this nation at risk if we do not get serious about training, supporting, and retaining a new generation of case officers who are willing and comfortable in working overseas for extended periods.
-Shlok
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Farah touches on the lack of social mobility in Nigeria- due in no small measure to Robb’s Global Guerrillas as evidenced here – and how transnational Nigerian gangs are expanding black globalization into Afghanistan.
It also signals a new danger for the influx of massive amounts of cash into a region where disaffected armed groups are growing in power and influence while corrupt, incompetent governments continue to crumble and breed contempt. It also intersects with a region of the world where Salafist groups are expanding their appeal, reach, and support for armed conflict.
Unless we can provide basic services and industry (read social mobility) for the populace – and faster, and from our perspective, more efficiently than the drug networks can – our efforts are doomed.
This is where Robb and Barnett clash, as OSD talks about here –
Both men are identifying the same dynamics. They just come to the discussion from opposite directions. Robb approaches the discussion from the GG perspective, asking “how can I disrupt this?” Barnett approaches the discussion from the Core (aka good globalization) perspective. His thinking focuses on “how do I keep this going?”
Barnett went into Afghanistan seeking to expand the global network. With our national security apparatus that is a long term inefficient process. Global Guerrillas have and will continue to exploit the lag between invasion and “provision” to their own ends.
-Shlok
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As the GWOT moves forward the states engaged in destroying terror will be forced to adapt the realities of this new kind of warfare. The NSA surveillance debate, the Patriot Act, the advent of state sponsored assasination, the redefining of sovereignty and failed states etc are all examples of this transition.
The rule set shift is being shaped and slowed by friction caused by the various forces Marc Schulman discusses here.
Most interesting to me was an article he cited where Pulitzer Prize winning author and professor of history Joseph Ellis (author of Founding Brothers) makes a profound mistake.
He argues –
My first question: where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.
Here is my version of the top tier: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.
Apparently the opening shots of a long term conflict designed to destroy the legitimacy of the American nation state does not qualify as a “serious challenge”.
The ivory tower has repeatedly shown an inability to understand and process this idea; with the noteable exceptions of Phillip Bobbit and Martin van Creveld of course.
-Shlok
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